Run walk your Runs!

From someone who could never understand why people ran long distances, it was indeed very tough to do just running. That would have been a crazy thing to do some years back. It made sense to run when you played football or any other game, but just running was indigestible for me.

So when my doc said I better do some exercise to control my cholesterol levels and to make my weak heart(they found something in a stress test), I decided to do something. I used to drive down to Krishna Rao Park in Basvanagudi, Bangalore, just a couple of kilometers away and just sit there watching people run and walk briskly. Getting on to the run-walk train looked really tough. Then an old Men's Health magazine came to my rescue. It was an article on jump rope(skipping) that caught my attention. I knew the normal jump rope routine which was again a routine boring stuff, but the article had some good tricks with the ropes graded on difficulty(1-5). So I started learning the new tricks and it made things a lot different. I would run/walk around the park and then do the rope tricks. That really got me on the fitness train. But serious running was still a long way to go. I also started biking(cycle) instead of driving to the park.

My first run was a 7K run as part of the Bangalore marathon, which seems to have been abandoned off late. I tried running the whole distance, but was forced to walk in between, but completed with difficulty. Another 5K followed, which was easy, but my heart trouble didn't seem to go away and I kind of fell off the running train. But I was doing swimming and yoga and once in a while jump rope(can do crosses and double unders). Then I consulted Dr. Ranganath Nayak of wockhardt, who assured me that there was nothing to worry and continue the runs.



However, pushing myself beyond a mile of continuous running was a problem leave alone 10K or half marathon. Though I had bought Galloways' book on running, I couldn't digest the run walk technique - that was sissy thing. But when the Sunfeast Bangalore 10K run was announced, I had no choice but to do run-walk if I wanted to complete a 10K. So based on Galloway's run predictor, I started preparing for the run to do a 70 min 10K. The first long run was within my apartment which was a 2-1min run-walk for 3miles, which was very comfortable. Next one was on the road for 4miles which again was very good. But the next one was a disaster when I tripped and fell on the road, serious risking the 10K. I cursed the organizers for not postponing the run instead of moving it a week earlier. But my jump rope came to my rescue - though I had difficulty in walking , standing and jumping was possible! By next week I could run slowly and I could do around 10K within 90 minutes by a 2-2 run walk. On race day, I decided to do a 2-1 run walk which resulted in a 80min finish with a good 500m run at the end. And it felt good at the end of the run - I could stand and travel in a bus without much of a problem.